


Atlas Would Be Proud

by orphan_account



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Boyd/Erica Implied, Erica's kind of dead in the fic so I don't think that actually makes them together., Feels, Gen, Lots of feels.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2013-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-27 08:43:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/976772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Boyd gets a tattoo, and asks Derek to burn it into him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Atlas Would Be Proud

**Author's Note:**

> This is unbeta'd but I'm tired of it burning a hole in my hard drive, so here it is. I felt there was a lot the show didn't go over, about Boyd and his relationships with people in general, so this is my two cents on the matter. 
> 
> Oh Boyd, you were so mistreated by the writers, I'm so sorry.

He's not sure what really prompted the idea. Maybe he'd had it all along, maybe it was Scott, maybe it was Derek. Maybe it was because he thought the pain of the needle might match the pain he held in, prick for prick. Turns out he was wrong.

Also turns out the tattoo doesn't stick.

So he goes to Scott, who gets a bit squeamish, so he sighs and goes to Derek instead, and Derek takes him inside the hollowed out shell of his family home. He had never really taken the time to look closely at the place before. To him it was just an abandoned house. But as Derek lifted the torch and lit it, it began to occur to him that maybe it was something a little more. 

Everyone has ghosts, he settles.

Boyd will have his burned into his flesh.

He'd never asked Derek about his own tattoo. (In the same spot Boyd had chosen to get his. Boyd wondered if it had been for the same reasons: Atlas carried the world on his shoulders, so would he.) The house, the tattoo, the grave in the backyard that now had a mate; all these things Boyd had never asked after. But Boyd figured he understood; these things belonged to Derek, they were his ghosts. Boyd was not allowed to see them, so he'd always turned away when he saw their haunted forms come up. 

But in the same respect for Boyd's silence, Derek never asked any questions either. Boyd thinks that's why he said yes to Derek in the first place. He hadn't asked if he was okay, he didn't pity, but he didn't ignore. It was silent acceptance. And as the heat of the fire neared his skin he wondered if maybe after all this time Derek hadn't asked because he couldn't bear any more weight between his own shoulders.

His skin cracks, then blisters, and pops and splits and crisps, and heals and heals and heals. But fire's the only thing that gets to a werewolf. Because fire, even when small, demands its attention be paid. And even wolves pay in blood. 

Boyd's straddling an old chair while Derek hovers over him with the torch. He feels like the fire is pushing him down into the earth, trying to inter him before his time. He realises with a spark how he wouldn't mind that at all, and then the pain suddenly stops. A vague half formed thought floated through his mind about if those two things were related.

Derek clicks off the torch and tosses it aside. 

Boyd guesses Derek's not afraid of fire here. Maybe instead of fear it'd feel like home. 

They both stay silent and Boyd grips the back of the chair he's straddling. It's already cracked from his hands in three places. But Derek had pulled it out from under a pile of wood and debris, so he supposed it didn't matter. He can feel the skin pulling itself back together. Like how water kept apart by your hands pools effortlessly together when released; his skin mends fluidly. He feels his back grow colder, and at last, he feels whole again. 

Except he really doesn't. 

He starts softly when he feels warmth and pressure there again. But it's not the fire. It's a steady, even heat that burns his skin with electricity, not fire. And he knows with a powerful certainty that even blind, def and dumb, he would still be able to recognize the touch of his alpha. It comforts him in a way he hadn't known was even possible. It's something he will never find in anything else again, and he knows _that_ with a certainty too.

"What does it mean?" Derek asks, voice a soft contrast to the weight of his hand. 

Boyd is quiet. 

A long time ago he talked and talked and talked and it didn't do any good. There were no words that could make anyone— even himself— understand how he felt. So he learned to say things without saying a word, because words were insufficient. They always are. 

 _She_ understood that.

Derek understands it.

"There's a quote," Boyd says, at last. "When people say, 'There are other fish in the sea,' I say, fuck you, _she was my sea.'_ "

And Derek's quiet for a turn, and when he speaks his voice is heavy like his hand between Boyd's shoulders.

"I'm not going to waste my breath on apologies," he says after some time. "Because I know to you they won't mean a thing. I understand that. But I need you to know, not— not as your alpha—" Derek paused for a breath, "I'm _asking_ you to understand, that I never meant any of this to happen."

They stay like that for a moment, then two, then at last, like dragging up a heaviness from the bottom of the ocean, Derek removes his hand. A deep carnal part of Boyd wants to jump up and close the space between himself and his alpha. Because his alpha means _safety_ , his alpha means _home_. But another part of Boyd, the part that walks and talks (or doesn't) in this flesh stays rooted right where he is.

"For what it's worth," Derek says, quiet still, "though our pain is different, the wound is the same."

Boyd wonders if being her alpha meant that Derek had felt her death differently. Viscerally. Wonders if when they had left, if they ever actually left Derek entirely. If _that_ was a wound that never healed. Something in him whispers that it's true. Because although there were layers of earth and mud between them, Boyd still felt her. 

Or maybe he just felt the hole where she should be. 

"Why'd you chase off Isaac and not me?" Boyd asks.

If Derek's surprised by the sudden change of subject, or the question itself, he doesn't show it. And Boyd's still facing backwards on this chair, holding on as if it's the only bit of driftwood in the sea, but he knows Derek's crossing his arms, and setting his jaw, and looking away.

Boyd can feel the answer boiling in the silence around Derek. 

"Isaac chose Scott a long time ago." Derek says, measured. "If Isaac wasn't with me, of course he'd go to Scott. He'd be safe there. But you," Derek pauses, and Boyd can practically hear him shuffling the words around to make them fit right. "You've never had anyone but yourself. Even from the very beginning. If I let you go, I don't know where you'd end up. And I couldn't bear the thought of that. Not again."

Boyd wondered for the second time if being an alpha means you feel things more viscerally. And in that moment Boyd felt like asking for once. Opening up Derek's pain and poking around in it, seeing Derek's grief rather than his own. But he stands and plucks his shirt off the dusty table they had been next to instead. Because in the end Boyd knows he'd only end up carrying the weight of that wound too, and Atlas wasn't made to bear two worlds 

He turns and looks fully at Derek who's standing in the shadows, shoulders bowed and brow heavy, bent but sturdy and fierce. And there against the backdrop of broken pieces of a burnt out home, Boyd sees it; the weight sitting between Derek's shoulders.

Boyd stops, just a moment, then pulls the shirt on the rest of the way in silence. Not a full silence, not a silence that speaks volumes or even speaks at all. Just the quiet of lack of words and meaning. 

Derek responds to Boyd's silence, "I wanted to give you the strength you thought you lacked. The wolf was a beautiful, freeing thing to me, I thought it could be for you as well. And maybe..." Here Derek's voice goes quiet. "Maybe some part of me, thought _I_ wouldn't have to be alone anymore either."

And for a moment it feels like the weight is gone. And he feels tired and weak like he hadn't let himself feel in ages. And it feels cathartic, and it feels good. And maybe Boyd's right about words never being enough. But maybe it was just the words people chose.


End file.
